Loot progression (specifically books)

[Calmwalker]

I'll start with I do like the loot progression for guns and armor. The slower pace is great for making more use of the gear you find and not becoming OP in days.

That said....Raided a book store and crack a book tower and 90% of the shelves were paper. Kept getting the same recipes over 3-4x throughout my playthrough. Day 11, I've had a motorbike for days and steel/motor tool parts to spare but with recipe drops being that bad, its no fun to actually clear a POI. I've cleared enough of them to get 3 sets of level 6 scrap armor. cant find steel tool recipe or motor tools and their not tied to talents. So I can cross the entire map no problem, but I can't make a decent tool and have to wait for the loot system to advance so I can make any more progress again? short of killing every zombie in sight for levels leaving me less time to build a base with subpar tools.

[Shurenai]

Recipes can drop at any stage of the game, with basically no limit on when; Though I believe the crucible recipe specifically is slightly skewed towards a higher gamestage(but can still appear even at level 1, with incredible luck.)

That said......Iron is not 'sub par'. Iron IS par. Steel is the hole in one or birdie. You can do tons with T2 equipment and armor.

Progresison is Stone->Iron->Steel. There's nothing after steel- Once you have steel, you're done. You'll never find better, ever. So you really shouldn't be into steel anything before day 21 at the earliest without some incredible luck.

Edit: Electric tools exist, but, frankly, i consider them sidegrades to steel tools; not upgrades. They're a lot more trouble than they're worth imo. But even including them, Iron is par.

[Lady MacBeth]

Seems to be the newer poi crack a books that this occurs at. I think the decision is based off the sheer number of book shelves in the new ones. There are several mansions, and buildings that as you play you will get to know on sight that have many of the old style bookcases where you get plenty of books from. Of course even the biggest of these only has like 9 book cases to loot.

Course the lore argument has always been that you aren't the first one there, and the good stuff was picked over already. And lets face it, if you walk into barnes and nobles tomorrow and start looking through their shelves 99% of it is just for entertainment and would not benefit you beyond scrap paper in an survival situation.

[Jonnson]

I mean, your pretty low level man. Day 11? That's not even early game. That's literally, newb. I don't mean that as an insult by any means. I just mean, relax. It's a slow patient kinda game...it goes to level 300, day, infinity. Your game stage is like 30? It goes to like 1000. My game stage is currently 260, at level 96, day 115 and I am still missing several books. Thats like 300 hrs of game play.

That being said, the game is very random. Try thinking of your perks as supplements to what you find. In one game you might find a first aid bandage recipe, and 15 antibiotics by level 10. No need to perk up physician, but you can't find a wheel for squat. So level up salvage operations and build a wrench to jack cars with. That's kinda how it works. Because the next game, you cant find an antibiotic for 20 levels, but are sitting on 15 wheels.

Also, consider changing what you are looting. Like if you have been focused on looting poi's, shift to looting garbage in the streets, or around the forest. Are you doing trader missions? If so, then stop and just explore some regular poi's. If not, then do some missions. Are you in the forest biome alot? If so, go mess around in the desert biome some. Switch those loot boxes up. They will say it doesn't matter, but it does. Honestly, in my current game I have found more books in garbage bags along the roadside than anywhere else. A lot more.

Another thing is; tools are dropped more commonly in "working stiffs." By going to a book store you are limiting yourself to w/e books drop there, even if you got 20 books from a library, you could get none that are related to tools.

With all that extra scrap armor, have you tried selling it, and buying a tool from a trader? Have you used that motorcycle to find all the traders?

What poi's are you raiding? a bunch of houses? Try some buildings. or a bunch of buildings? try some houses.

And lastly, the skill, "miner 69er" allows you to craft better tools. You can craft a tier 5 steel pick ax if you max it out. Stop looking for books, and hoping for a lucky find, specific to a certain item you need, and look for what you need to make or buy that item. 15 steel tool parts for instance. And keep this in mind, steel is end game. End game is really far away from day 11.

So you know, I used a tier 6 stone ax until I found an auger at level 80. Raising my stamina regen and using teas compensated for not finding anything in between. Think outside of the box.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Ming:

Seems to be the newer poi crack a books that this occurs at. I think the decision is based off the sheer number of book shelves in the new ones. There are several mansions, and buildings that as you play you will get to know on sight that have many of the old style bookcases where you get plenty of books from. Of course even the biggest of these only has like 9 book cases to loot.

This, exactly. The new style shelves have a lower chance to have actual books/blueprints, but there are SO many more shelves than before... I typically leave the book store with 10-20 things to read, which is as much if not more than the old book store. Just make sure to actually check all the shelves and piles, there are dozens and can be easy to miss.

But if people just want the old style, the mansion or the big church have as many as the old book store did.

[Calmwalker]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Recipes can drop at any stage of the game, with basically no limit on when; Though I believe the crucible recipe specifically is slightly skewed towards a higher gamestage(but can still appear even at level 1, with incredible luck.)

That said......Iron is not 'sub par'. Iron IS par. Steel is the hole in one or birdie. You can do tons with T2 equipment and armor.

Progresison is Stone->Iron->Steel. There's nothing after steel- Once you have steel, you're done. You'll never find better, ever. So you really shouldn't be into steel anything before day 21 at the earliest without some incredible luck.

Edit: Electric tools exist, but, frankly, i consider them sidegrades to steel tools; not upgrades. They're a lot more trouble than they're worth imo. But even including them, Iron is par.

Maybe so, but I had to talent to get nail gun, which is a steep investment, because I don't want to spend 3x as long upgrading each block building up my base. I've played through A18 so its probably just I'm not fresh to the game so I'm not willing to spend the time building something with average tools after I know how much faster it can be done especially if I have large scale building in mind.

Also i lucked into the gas can recipe so once you have that motor tools are a non-issue.